Like Yesterday, Like Never
by nothing-rhymes-with-ianto
Summary: War is hell, and there will always be worse days.


_Written for the "violence" square of angst_bingo. I attempted to write the Vietnam War portion in a style slightly similar to The Things They Carried, but it's been about a year since I read it, so I can't remember exactly how the style was._

* * *

_Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait._  
- The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

It's been a long, horrible day. Too much blood, too many deaths. They sit cross-legged on Jack's little camp bed, backs against the stone wall. Ianto's too-big cotton shirt makes his back itch, but he doesn't mind. It reminds him that he can still feel.

"Jack?" He doesn't look toward Jack, preferring to gaze into middle distance, or watch from the corner of his eye.

Jack doesn't look at him either, staring out into the dim light. "Yeah?"

Ianto breathes slowly out his nose. "Can I ask you a question? Or make a request?"

"I guess."

"I know this is strange, but can you tell me about a day worse than this? It sounds morbid, but I need to know that things can get worse. I need to appreciate that things aren't as bad. It's counter-intuitive, I know."

"But sometimes that's what you need. I understand, Ianto."

"Thanks. Sorry for asking you for this."

Jack shrugs and stares down at his hands for a long time. He opens and closes his mouth a few times as if trying to figure out how to put something to words.

"Back when I was a kid, just after I joined the Time Agency, a war broke out. A lot of us new Agency recruits were sent off to fight. I brought my best friend with me to join because I thought it would be fun. Because apparently I hadn't had enough of violence at home."

"You're a thrill-seeker, Jack. It's okay." Jack waves him away. Ianto realizes that the comfort was automatic. It seems that Jack has at least partly come to peace with this experience, for the expression on his face is more one of recollection rather than regret.

"We were put in the same squad. We partnered up for everything. On one mission our squad was to sneak into an enemy base and steal some important equipment. I won't go into the technical stuff. My friend and I, we got caught, and the rest of the squad got away. The enemy could tell my friend wasn't very strong. So they tortured him instead of me. Not to get any information from him, he didn't know anything. They did it to try and break me. I listened to him scream and cry for days. I watched him bleeding and covered in dirt. He died right in front of me at their hands and there was nothing I could do. I got my best friend killed and they let me go because they realised we didn't know anything."

Jack can remember the cold dread in his stomach as he hung in chains in the grey room. He remembers watching the light go out of his friend's eyes, the way his friends face had gone from slack to peaky and tense, his eyes bright with fever, how he'd blindly cried out for various friends and family members before falling slack and still in his chains. He remembers being shoved out of the enemy base with his friend's body in his arms, thin and exhausted, and walking for miles until some scout had seen them and called the medical squad. He remembers the skin under his fingernails from how hard he'd been holding on to the body when they'd pried it from his grip.

"They let me go and I carried his body until someone from my company saw us and called for help."

Ianto shifts to stretch his legs out straight. He frowns and tries to imagine Jack as a young teenager, tries to imagine a mortal Jack, a happier, more naïve Jack. He tries to imagine how Jack back then might be different from the Jack he knows now. It's hard to do. Jack's left hand clenches and unclenches. Ianto watches it out of the corner of his eye.

Another distant memory floats into Jack's mind. The image becomes clearer as he studies it and tries to recall everything that happened. It's like a strange movie in his mind, some colours bright and saturated in his mind while others are faded away. The sounds are loud and clear like he is there, not years and miles away.

"I fought in the American Vietnam war. Just in nineteen sixty-eight and sixty-nine. Then Torchwood needed me and called me back. I was still a freelance agent then."

"That's not in your files."

"There's a lot of things not in my files."

"Hmm."

"Anyway, I was just a regular PFC. Just part of a group. I wasn't commanding anybody. I didn't want to at the time. I followed orders; I didn't give any."

Jack closes his eyes, this time still reliving the scene. Ianto watches the rhythmic clenching of his hand. In his mind, Jack watches the rhythmic bump and sway of ropes dangling from the ceiling of a moving jeep, the oppressive heat and constant buzz of insect life all around.

"They added another infantry platoon to ours to raise our numbers since we were heading into a thick bit. There was this guy from the other platoon, I knew we were gonna be friends as soon as I saw him. And not friends like I was going to flirt with him. I mean we talked a couple times in passing and there was an immediate camaraderie. Then we had to go. We were in a convoy mostly made up of M151s and Deuce and a halfs. I was riding in the back of a Mutt with a few other guys. He was in a Deuce about five cars up, riding passenger. It hit a bomb. A big one. The driver was killed, but he wasn't. He was pinned inside the vehicle, trapped, and it was on fire. Some of us jumped out to see if we could get anyone out. But we couldn't. There was nothing I could do. If I'd tried to pull him out, we couldn't have helped him, and he would have died anyway from his injuries.

"So I had to watch and listen to him screaming as he burned and bled out in the damn truck because there was nothing we could do. I just remember him looking out at us. He was in so much pain and he was screaming for us to get him out, to help him, but we couldn't. We just had to stand there because the car was so mangled. I remember him desperate and screaming at all of us. Then he looked at me, and it was like he just accepted that he was going to die. He didn't stop screaming, but he stopped struggling and just sat there. And the sound just went on and on, and when it stopped, it was still in my ears. I remember that he was biting his lips to keep from screaming. Afterward I remember thinking that it looked like some bird had kissed him silly. I remember that his hair was too long. It was stuck to his forehead and part of it was over his eye. I never even learned his name. I lost a friend I never had that day, and he looked right at me when he was dying."

Ianto covers the convulsing fist with one hand and Jack finally turns to him. His gaze slowly focuses to the present, pulling his expression taut into exhaustion and worry.

"Sorry, Jack. I didn't mean to make you do that."

Jack shakes his head, waving him away. His gaze is a hundred yards distant, and deep with sadness. "You shouldn't be. I need to remember those things. I need to remember that war is hell. I need to remember that things can always get worse. There will always be worse days. And in war, your friends will always die."


End file.
